Hunted
by an REG Omega
Summary: To many, Pandora is a world of beauty and wonder. To a disillusioned RDA pilot stranded deep in the hostile wilderness, it is anything but. Some OCs, Trudy in later chapters. Rated T for violence.


_**Author's Note:**_ _When I first saw Avatar, my sentiments were mixed. The world it envisioned was fantastic, the special effects revolutionary, but the story itself was disappointingly weak. I've since been pleasantly surprised by the quality and depth of the works produced by this fandom, such that I've decided to add my own contribution to the mix. Save for some ham-fisted Cheneyisms delivered by Quaritch, the perspective of the human colonists in the lead-up to the film's climax was largely unexplored, something I hope to do with this story. Since it's been a while since I saw the film, the chronology of the battle in the first chapter may be a bit off, so I ask that you bear with me. This will be much shorter than my other works and have a significantly darker tone, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. And as always, your feedback is greatly appreciated._

* * *

**Hunted**

Chapter One: Eywa's Wrath**  
**

Iknimaya, the Na'vi called them. The Thundering Mountains. Suspended in the air by the Meissner effect, these towering monuments of Unobtainium were a true sight to behold. At times during their slow march around Pandora's equator, the great rocks would collide and grind against each other; thunderous impacts which could be heard hundreds of miles away. But today, they thundered for a different reason entirely.

"Playing this game again, are we?" Warrant Officer Ray Tyrel smacked the computer console before him. He knew it was pointless. The incomprehensibly strong magnetic field that held the mountains aloft had the side effect of blinding his Samson's electronic sensor package. That meant he would be driving by visual flight rules from here on in, making an already-dangerous mission that much more complicated. Maneuvering in tight formation through the massive rocks, the full RDA armada pressed on with merciless resolve. Hundreds of rotors beat the air, their backdraft contributing to the turbulence that normally made flying among Pandora's floating mountains so treacherous, but there was no turning back now.

_"All right, boys and girls, we are now in Indian country_,_"_ the CAG announced over the radio. "_Keep your eyes open, keep your fingers on the triggers, and stay alert."_

"_Remember,"_ Quaritch growled, _"**nobody**__ runs."_

Tyrel raised an eyebrow at the colonel's ultimatum before peering over his shoulder to address his door gunners. "Hear that?" he shouted over the rotors, "We're eyes-only from here on in. You see _anything_, you call it out. There's no room for error here."

"Got it, boss. Time to light some fires!" Private Adam Rourke crooned, swatting off the safety of the port door gun and eying down the iron sights. "Hey, O'Brien," he called, "ready to get your cherry popped?"

"I think I'm gonna throw up," the mechanic responded.

"Don't you puke in my bird, Patrick," Tyrel warned. "You can puke in your mask if you insist, but I'm not coming back there to clean it."

Leaning heavily on his mounted gun, Patrick O'Brien shook his head, wondering for the hundredth time why he had volunteered for the bombing mission. For all of the hundreds of hours he had spent elbow-deep in the engines of these craft, this was his first time flying in one, and the first time he had been directly exposed to any kind of combat situation. O'Brien glanced at the CAG's Scorpion, below them and to the right. At the heart of the formation, Razor One – the colonel's Dragon gunship – flew escort to the delta-winged Valkyrie shuttle. The bay doors of the craft were already open, and the mechanic could see mercenaries within, manning defense turrets and preparing the shuttle's ordnance for release. "Could someone explain the logic of this to me again?" he asked. "If someone comes and burns down my house, I'd be pretty pissed off. So now we think burning down their church is gonna pacify them?"

"It's not a church," Tyrel answered. "It's more like their deity. The hub of their life-force, or something like that."

"It's just a tree," Rourke interjected. "They're willing to die by the hundreds to protect a _tree?_"

"It's more than that to them," the pilot replied. "They think their ancestors' memories are preserved in there, and that they'll upload to it when they die - some sort of quasi-immortality as part of a world-spanning consciousness. It's their afterlife. Sounds like a bunch of new-age crap, I know, but the point is they believe it enough that they'll commit everything they've got to protecting this place. And if they're fending us off, then they're not attacking the colony."

"They're bringing bows to a gunfight."

"Think you'd be as confident on the ground?" Tyrel asked. Roarke blinked, unsure for a moment if the pilot was threatening him. "Don't underestimate them," the pilot continued. "They're more than capable of bringing one of our birds down, and it's a long walk home. If you want a straight fight, this is where you'll get it. If we hit this shrine, they should be so demoralized that that'll be the end of it."

_Yeah, and how did Dresden work out?_ O'Brien thought. "What do you mean, 'should'?"

"If they don't, it means we keep on pushing," Rourke answered. "We'll drive the spear-chuckers back to their huts. Then burn the huts. We're not screwing around any more."

The mechanic rolled his eyes. While the military was an honorable profession, this was not a job for honorable men. Twice court-martialed, Roarke was typical of the infantry stationed on Pandora in that he nursed a condescending view of the natives bordering on hatred and took way too much pleasure in killing things. O'Brien was now certain that the RDA had intentionally sought such men - it was the only possible explanation for the lopsided ratio of sadistic pricks among SecFor's ranks. Men like Roarke were suited for this work. Men like Roarke enjoyed it.

The jury was still out on the pilot, though. Ray Tyrel held the odd distinction of being the only merc on Pandora serving a second tour. His combined eighteen years in-cryo earned him the call-sign "Freezerburn," and though he seemed sharp enough to fly, some were convinced that he'd had a few screws knocked loose by a close brush with a Great Leonopteryx that ended his first tour. Every pilot had violent encounters with Pandoran wildlife at some point or another. The better pilots survived them. It was natural selection at work.

O'Brien silently watched as a rock the size of a small car drifted lazily past the Samson. No doubt, its mineral worth was more than he would make in his lifetime. Pandora had once sounded like an unmissable opportunity, but had he known then what the Company would ask of him, he would not have signed on. As with many of the civilians at Hell's Gate, he had been appalled by the footage of the strike on Hometree, but it was far too late to do anything about that. O'Brien was sure that, for all of his posturing, Quaritch had been right about one thing. Twenty thousand Na'vi warriors had not gathered as a mere show of force. The locals wanted blood. If unopposed, they would descend on Hell's Gate like a tidal wave, overwhelm the perimeter defenses, and butcher every last man and woman on Pandora, civilians and mercenaries alike. And O'Brien was not ready to die.

"Check this," Rourke called out. "We've got a lot of movement down on the ground."

Tyrel threw a switch to feed the radio through the overhead speakers. "_This is Wainfleet,"_ the radio buzzed._ "We've got positive enemy contact, horseback cavalry. Taking minor casualties, but we're routing them. It's a damned shooting gallery down here. Request air support for mop-up."_

"Launching a cavalry charge straight into automatic gunfire." The pilot shook his head. "Who thought that one up?"

"We going, boss?" Rourke asked. Already, a pair of Scorpions could be seen breaking formation.

"No. Keep your eyes peeled, they'll be on us soon enough."

"It's a damned massacre down there." Peering through the trees below them, the mercenary sounded disappointed to be missing out. "I'm itching for some payback for Grid 12."

"Yo, merc, eyes up," Tyrel snapped. "The threats to us are up here. I need your head in the game, not up your ass."

"Who're you calling 'merc,' freeze baby?"

The mechanic stared ahead blankly. Grid 12. Grid 12. O'Brien had heard the mercenaries talking about that a lot. From what he gathered, a dozen men assigned walking escort duty for a pair of bulldozers clearing forest in that sector had been ambushed and brutally killed by the natives, inciting anger among the mercenaries just before the strike on Hometree. Even after that one-sided slaughter, among some the anger persisted. The official word on the Grid 12 incident was that RDA had been conducting routine mineral prospecting, and that the Na'vi had fired the first shots. The second part he knew to be true, the video had proven that. But still, heavy traffic passed through the hangar deck. People talked.

Should he have said something?

There had been that geologist, Novak. Months before the animal attack that sent him home in a wheelchair, he had dismissed Grid 12 as a potential mining site. The overlaying vegetation was too thick to be worth the trouble of mining what little unobtanium there was to be found there. Then there was that pilot, from Grace Augustine's science division. Did Administration know about the Na'vi religious site in Grid 12? Did they send those bulldozers there to provoke a hostile reaction? Overwhelmed by the scramble in the lead-up to Hometree and frightened by the implications of believing what he suspected, O'Brien had kept his mouth shut. But what if he hadn't? Those men and women had not died defending others, honoring sworn oaths, or fighting for any noble ideal. Mercenaries typically signed up in the belief that they would live to cash their paychecks. If Selfridge and Quaritch had sent them on a suicide mission blind, if the Company had intentionally fed those men to the wolves, how would the rest of the SecFor detachment have reacted to the news? Would they have followed Quaritch to Hometree, or dumped his ass over the most convenient banshee nest? Would any of this have happened?

_"Ten minutes out,_" the CAG announced.

Leaning on his door gun, the mechanic sighed. What did it matter anymore? Speaking up now would not turn this armada around, or change the reality of twenty-thousand stone-cold hunters lining up to storm the gates. The colony should have been evacuated when the first satellite photos came in, but the Company had already made too big of an investment here to cut their losses. It was too late now for any hope of peaceful recourse. Victory was the only way any of them would survive.

As he scanned the horizon, movement in the far-off mist suddenly caught his eye. Standing up straight, he glanced down the iron sights to take aim at the apparition, but a tangle of vines draping from the bottom of one of the mountains blocked his view. By the time the obstruction had passed, it was gone. Watching the mountain drift along for a few more seconds, something enormous abruptly emerged from behind it, an orange blaze of color that made O'Brien's breath catch in his throat. He had read about this creature, but nothing had prepared him for seeing it in person. As he stared through the mist, all sound seemed to fade away, save for the half-imagined swoop of the creature's powerful wings. Dwarfing all but the Dragon gunship and the shuttle itself, the Great Leonopteryx was less an animal than a force of nature, but as it drew near, somehow, impossibly, on its back he could see a Na'vi hunter riding it. How were the natives able to harness such power, he wondered, tracking it through the skies. How could such a force be domesticated? Following the majestic sight in awe, he realized, too late, where it was going. "Oh my God!"

Tyrel's head jerked around as a piercing scream broke over his headset. The CAG's Scorpion was clutched in the Leonopteryx's talons like a toy. The beast swung the craft around once, twice, before hurtling it into the side of a mountain.

"Fuck! Thanks for the warning, asshole!" Tyrel called back. Leaning on the cyclic, he whipped the Samson around to engage the new threat. "All units, all units, hostiles inbound! Committing!"

Clinching the trigger on the cyclic before him, the pilot's eyes remained locked on the animal as the Samson's forward 50's began spitting fire in its direction. Heavy rounds pounded into the side of the mountain behind it, shearing off large chips of rock which spun through space in every direction. Rourke clung tightly to his door gun, steadying himself as Tyrel violently rotated to track the fast-moving target, and the mercenary's jaw twitched involuntarily as he grasped the scene that swung into view. Following their leader, over a hundred Na'vi-piloted banshees had emerged from the fog with arrows nocked to their bows and quickly began mingling with the RDA armada.

As the Samson tipped forward, Rourke's eyes locked on a banshee among the flock that singled out their Samson. Screaming, he spun up his weapon and depressed the trigger, shredding the beast and its rider less than forty feet away. As the broken animal plunged to the forest below, adrenaline took over and the mercenary let out a ferocious whoop. Rourke lined up his sights on his next target, but the Samson continued to rotate until the banshee rider passed out of his range of motion. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a wall of rock come between O'Brien and the marauding Banshees. "What the hell, boss?" Rourke shouted, "Where are you going?"

Circling behind the mountain that now sported the burning remains of the air group commander's Scorpion, Tyrel glimpsed an orange shape whipping behind a second mountain and jammed the cyclic forward in pursuit. The sounds of combat began to fade away, leaving only the thump of the Samson's rotors beating the air. Heavy mist wrapped the drifting mountains, shrouding the dense rainforest far below and providing countless places to hide. Cursing, Tyrel thumped the side of the cockpit with a fist. The Leonopteryx had vanished as quickly as it appeared.

"Yo, Ahab," Rourke called out, "the main fight's back _that_ way!"

"Shut up," Tyrel warned. The mercenary's eyes flared dangerously at the reprimand.

"We've gone too far from the group," O'Brien said, panic rising in his voice. "We're alone out here!"

"Shut up."

"You're gonna get us killed!"

"I said, shut up!"

"Tyrel?" Eyes blazing, Rourke drew his sidearm and directed it at the back of the pilot's head. "Tyrel! Turn this fucking thing around or I swear to God I'll-"

The Samson rocked violently as Tyrel stomped on the rudder pedal, sending the mercenary sprawling to the deck. O'Brien fell to his knees and grabbed for Rourke's pistol as it clattered across the metal floor and tipped over the edge, falling to the jungle below. Speechless, Rourke pushed himself up on one elbow and stared at the pilot.

"You'll what, merc? Pop me, then kick back and watch as you pile into the side a mountain? I'd have almost paid to see the look on your face." Tyrel's eyes narrowed. "Last time I say it. You try that shit again, and you're _walking_ home. Now shut the fuck up and man your posts."

Looking up, O'Brien swallowed nervously. "Um... Ray?"

"What?" Tyrel snapped. Looking to his right, the pilot's annoyed expression melted as he realized what he was seeing. Through the corner of his eye, he had dismissed the mixture of blue and green painting the mountainside as vines or moss, but now he registered movement. Less than fifty feet away, forty banshees clung to the side of the mountain like bats on the wall of a cave, their wings fluttering in anticipation. Each bore a Na'vi rider, and as they hung onto their mounts, their eyes locked on the Samson with ferocious resolve.

"Open up, O'Brien," Rourke quietly urged, pushing himself off of the floor. "O'Brien... shoot!"

A Na'vi hunter let out a battle cry, readying a poison-tipped arrow as his mount leaped from the side of the mountain and swooped towards the Samson.

"Everyone grab on to something!"

The gunners clawed for handholds on the floor as Tyrel jammed a foot on the rudder and killed the throttle. The Samson dropped like a stone and jinxed towards the mountain, the sudden maneuver forcing the banshee rider to whip over the top of them to avoid a collision. Banshee riders peeled off the mountainside by the dozens, their arrows skipping off of the fuselage at oblique angles as they parted to avoid the multi-ton metal craft. Tyrel recklessly barged through the flock, dipping beneath the mountain and turning wildly to avoid the hanging vines. He took up a holding position as close to the underside of the mountain as he dared, giving Rourke the angle he needed to repel any pursuers. Recovering quickly, the mercenary spun up his door gun and cut down three banshees that dipped into view, spiraling to the ground like downed aircraft as their riders pinwheeled freely through space. "Can you fly, you bastards?" Rourke shouted.

"All units, be advised, ambush parties behind the rocks!" Tyrel announced, gasping between phrases. Clicking off the transmitter, fear and chaos poured through the Samson's overhead speakers in reply.

_"Bogey on your six!"_

_"Someone just raked the hell out of Razor One!"_

_"Check your fire, check your fire!"_

_"Get this thing off me!"  
_

"That sounds fucking awful," Rourke said.

Turning off the radio, Tyrel looked over his shoulder. "How y'all holding up?" he called out.

"Never better," Rourke grinned. "Damned good flying, freezerburn."

The pilot nodded slightly, the gun-to-head incident still fresh in his mind. "How 'bout you, Patrick?"

"Breathing." Seeing that O'Brien was still white-knuckling a handhold on the floor and panting inside his mask, Tyrel had to shake his head. The mechanic had volunteered thinking he could help in the defense of the colony, but he was too soft to deal with this, and now he knew it. For all purposes, Tyrel was down to just one gunner, making his starboard defense weak. _To hell with it_, he thought. _There's no backing out now._

With a flick of the wrist, the pilot angled about to face the passing armada, and the full chaos of battle came into view. Tracer rounds and the white streaks of missiles filled the air as banshees dipped towards the heavily-armed attack craft. In a terrifying display of agility, a banshee gliding above the fleet folded its wings against its body and dove straight at an escorting Samson. The rider put an arrow into the pilot at point-blank range as her mount latched onto the side of the craft and plucked out the portside gunner in a single motion. Barely slowing down, the banshee backflipped away from the wheeling craft and cast the luckless man through the turbine of a nearby Scorpion. The latter craft fell to the ground in pieces as the listing Samson and its surviving gunner plowed into the face of a mountain. Even Rourke was stunned to silence by the savagery of the attack. It was as though the rider were an extension of her mount.

"They've got no bridles," O'Brien said, eyes wild with fear. "They've got no harnesses. They aren't even holding on to them! How the hell are they flying those things!?!"

"Our guys're getting cut to pieces out there," Tyrel said. "Pull yourself together, Patrick. We're going back in."

Seeing an opening in the vines before him, Tyrel pressed forward on the cyclic, moving in the direction of the rest of the strike force. As clear sky peeked from beneath the underside of the mountain, he could see the RDA armada swarmed by over three hundred banshees, with more flocking in from each mountain they passed. As the Samson drew close to the opening, a single banshee rider swooped into sight before them and loosed an arrow in the space of a second. Tyrel let out a yelp as it punched through the glass canopy and embedded itself in the cushion beside him at throat-level. Quickly stabilizing his flight path, Tyrel dipped below a dangling vine and emerged from the shadow of the mountain. Within seconds, three more banshees dove down in front of them, charging into the fray.

Rourke booted the mechanic behind him. "You wanna live?" he snapped, "get your ass up off the floor and _start shooting!"_

The armada was seething with activity as Tyrel's Samson rejoined them. Mercenaries nested atop and within the shuttle fired wildly at passing banshees, many of which seemed determined to take shots at its cockpit. The following minutes were a blur of frenetic activity. Conserving the limited ammunition of his forward fifties, Tyrel kept pace with the shuttle while Rourke methodically targeted every banshee that came into range, counting his kills out loud. It quickly became clear that displays such as that they had seen from beneath the mountain were more a result of luck than anything else. The Na'vi seemed to know exactly where and how to hit each craft - a fact that disturbed Tyrel greatly - but despite their speed, agility, and natural grace, they still stood little chance against the RDA's overwhelming firepower. The fragile banshees would often crumple and fall with a single hit, their riders plummeting helplessly to the canopy below. Yet despite the appalling casualties they had already suffered, the natives continued to cast themselves at the powerful fleet.

Tyrel watched as a number of Scorpions gunships, bristling with weaponry, leap-frogged ahead of the shuttle to clear the way. Once SecFor learned to anticipate it, the Na'vi ambush strategy began very quickly to work against them. It never paid to stay put when the enemy knew exactly where you were, as the natives now demonstrated by being mowed down as quickly as they emerged from behind the mountains. The RDA had taken some punishment initially on account of surprise, and the Na'vi continued to wear down their numbers, but there was no doubt now as to which side was winning. With the bomb site only minutes out, Tyrel silently hoped the predictions were right, and all of this would quickly come to an end.

With an electronic chime, his heads-up display painted a crosshare on a retreating banshee rider as it passed before him, but the pilot did not pull the trigger. While well-equipped for defending itself, the Samson was designed as a workhorse, and the powerful twin fifty-caliber guns under his direct control had far less ammunition than that available to his door gunners. He was saving it for a purpose. The chaos of battle had put a damper on his search, but after several minutes, he again saw the orange flash he was looking for. Rourke and O'Brien's legs shifted beneath them as Tyrel broke formation a second time, diving towards his target with single-minded resolve. Lining up the sights on his preoccupied target, the pilot clenched his teeth and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

"No, no!" he roared, as electronic chirping met his ears. He had a perfect shot lined up on his target, but the computer's IFF system forbid him to fire so close to the helpless Samson clutched in the Leonopteryx's talons. As its door gunners were tossed free, tracer rounds suddenly pounded into the Samson, lighting it on fire and prompting the Leonopteryx to release it and dive behind another mountain. Tyrel quickly saw that Quaritch's Dragon gunship had fired the shots. With his own IFF restrictions overridden, the colonel seemed ready to make good on his earlier threat. Gritting his teeth, Tyrel tightened his grip on the cyclic. "Oh no, Quaritch," he spat. "This one's mine."

"They're falling back!" Rourke called out. Tyrel peeled his eyes from the orange blaze long enough to see banshees scattering to the four winds with their rider's tails between their legs. Tracers from other craft licked out after them, but seconds later the last hunter vanished in the mist unscathed. Very quickly, the armada sank into an uneasy silence. His eyes piercing the fog, Tyrel angled about in the direction the Leonopteryx had last appeared. "Don't you do it," his gunner warned. "They'll lead us into an ambush, just like last time."

Tyrel restrained himself, but not on Rourke's account. Something was wrong. He felt it, like a shift in the wind. The hair on the pilot's neck bristled as fleeting shadows began to dance across his console. "What the hell is this?" he said, just above a whisper. Then he looked up.

Rourke and O'Brien tumbled as though the floor were dropped out from under them, such was the speed of the pilot's descent. Clawing like a mad cat as he slid outward, Rourke caught a handhold on the floor, his legs dangling outside mere feet from the ducted fan that threatened to eviscerate him. Lashed by the wind, he twisted upward, and a scream escaped the mercenary as he registered the nightmare vision beyond the spinning blades. Spilling from every mountaintop, countless thousands of wild banshees descended on the fleet like the legions of hell. Approaching from the most vulnerable direction, they wrapped themselves around every craft they could catch, extracted their crew, and tore them apart.

"Get us out of here!" Rourke called into the wind, "You've gotta get us out of here!"

The mercenary's plight escaped Tyrel as he plunged between the yet-unwary aircraft around him, trying to put in as much distance as he could. Fumbling with his safety tether, O'Brien whipped around as Rourke, screaming, began to lose grip. The mercenary's free hand flailed blindly for purchase as his tenuous hold on the handle began to weaken. Latching the tether to the base of his turret, the mechanic pushed himself across the gap as far as the line allowed, grasping for Rourke's free hand. The merc slammed violently against the side of the Samson as the pilot abruptly stopped their descent, fracturing half a dozen ribs and smashing a leg against the port landing skid, but somehow hanging on. At last their hands connected.

"I've got you!" the mechanic called triumphantly. "You're gonna be okay!"

Struggling to haul the man up, O'Brien looked up and froze. Any hope left in Rourke's expression vanished as he took in the dread on O'Brien's face. The wounded merc turned to look over his shoulder, and in the next instant he was ripped away from the Samson and carried off into the mist by one of the shrieking banshees that now encircled the armada from below. He never had time to scream. Shrinking back, O'Brien clung to the base of his turret gun, almost catotonic in fear.

Na'vi riders began to appear again, exempt from the banshees' aggression, and Tyrel knew it was over. Ignoring his flight path, he turn to face the largest incoming concentration and cut loose, intent on taking as many of the beasts with him as he could. For what seemed like eternity, Tyrel waited for the unseen impact that would signal imminent death, but ultimately, he would see it coming.

Twenty feet before the cockpit, a final banshee sank into view. Tyrel's eyes widened as he saw what its rider was carrying. Jamming the cyclic as far as it would go, his Samson began to pitch forward and drop as the banshee swooped by overhead, but it was too little, too late. A jarring impact shook the entire craft, lifting O'Brien off the deck and then slamming him back down. With the wind howling past him, O'Brien clung to the swivel mount of his door gun for dear life. The console before Tyrel whined with alarms as his port rotor failed, and the swarmed armada fell away into the sky. Fighting the joystick in his hands and the torque pedals at his feet, Tyrel cursed through clenched teeth as the plummeting Samson entered an uncontrolled spin. Leather straps dug into his chest as centripetal force threw him against the restraints. Beyond the canopy, fire, rock, and clear blue sky flashed by in a nauseating display as the forest rushed up to meet them.

"Brace for impact!"


End file.
